According to a support document recently spotted by MacRumors, Apple Music users can now seamlessly transfer their playlists to YouTube Music. This is a big step forward, as Apple has never previously offered a native tool for transferring playlists to competing music services, making YouTube Music the first service to benefit from this feature.
This new feature has some limitations. Only songs available on YouTube Music can be transferred, so you don’t need to migrate podcasts, audiobooks, or non-collaborative shared playlists. Additionally, curated playlists, personal music files, and Apple Music organizational folders are also excluded from the transfer.
To move your playlists, you’ll need an active Apple Music or iTunes Match subscription and a YouTube Music account. The process is simple: after logging in to Apple’s Data & Privacy page, select “Transfer a Copy of Your Data” and follow the instructions. Depending on the number of playlists you have, the transfer process may take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours.
It’s worth noting that Apple Music doesn’t yet support transferring playlists to other streaming services like Spotify or Amazon Music; you’ll need a third-party tool to do so. However, Apple may be working on making it easier to import playlists. In February, some Reddit users noticed an Apple Music beta on Android that let you move playlists from other platforms to Apple Music using the third-party service SongShift.